5 Ways Meditation Can Improve Your Sexual Confidence

What’s your number-one turn-on? Sexy lingerie, the perfect body type, whispers of ‘sweet nothings’? There are a lot of different things people find sexy, but one thing that almost everyone agrees is a turn-on: sexual confidence. No matter what your preferences are, knowing what you want in the bedroom and being able to ask for it means better sex for you and your partner.

Sexual confidence can be difficult to come by. If you are older and not in the best shape of your life, you may be intimidated by a younger partner. If you’re inexperienced, you may find that an older, more practiced partner leaves you feeling inadequate. In a new relationship, your confidence can easily be shaken by an offhanded comment or a comparison to a previous lover. If you’ve been in a committed relationship for a long time, your lack of confidence may be so ingrained that you think you can’t shake it.

No matter what your circumstance, your experience level or the kind of relationship you are in, meditation can help you boost your sexual confidence. Here are five ways:

Meditation Reduces Cortisol

Cortisol is the stress hormone. When you are in a stressful situation, cortisol kicks in to reduce or shut down your body’s responses to things that are not essential. It suppresses your reproductive system and your digestive system, among others. If you are continually stressed, your cortisol levels will be elevated. The increased level of cortisol will direct your body to pay attention to those things that are needed for survival and to ignore non-essential things like pleasure.

Meditation reduces the level of cortisol in your body. Research shows that meditation can decrease the amount of cortisol your body releases and it can also lower your levels of anxiety and fatigue. With these physical reactions to stress reduced, your body is better able to react and respond to the pleasurable sensations produced by the sexual activity. When sex is more satisfying, your confidence increases.

Increased levels of cortisol have been linked to mental illness, depression, and shorter life expectancy, and have also been shown to inhibit social connectivity, making it difficult to form relationships. If you have trouble making connections that could lead to a sexual relationship, excess cortisol may be to blame.

Meditation Increases Your Self-Awareness

Meditation builds confidence through self-awareness. Focusing on self-awareness increases your confidence since you are focusing on your strengths and your limitations, but you are doing it without judgment. Meditation helps you to accept your limitations and turn them into strengths.

Meditation puts you in touch with your subconscious mind and helps you to filter out all the distractions we face every day. These can include thoughts about work and family responsibilities, the state of the world today and worries about the future. All of these external stimuli act on your self-awareness, burying it deeper and deeper from the surface.

Increased self-awareness can help you to connect with your true self, and give you new insight on the things that are truly important to you and your well-being. As you focus on your body and your desires, you become more in tune with what you want and how to express it.

Increasing your self-awareness will help you understand and express your desires. The ability to talk about what you want increases your confidence significantly and often leads to a better experience for both you and your partner. What could be more exciting, especially in a long-term relationship that may have gotten into a rut, than to be able to ask your partner to try something new with you? Increased self-awareness can give you the confidence to do just that.

Self-awareness will also give you the confidence to express what you don’t like and what doesn’t arouse you during sex. This can be particularly difficult if you are in a long-term relationship in which your partner does something that you don’t like, but you have never mentioned it before. Rather than continuing to endure what doesn’t give you pleasure, you can use your newfound confidence to speak up and suggest something else that may work for both of you.

Meditation Helps You Maintain Youthful Vitality

As we age, our sex life sometimes suffers. Sometimes it’s because we get busy and stop finding the time for frequent sex. Sometimes our bodies are less nimble, and that makes us uncomfortable. Sometimes we are self-conscious that we don’t have those pert breasts or six-pack abs that we had in our twenties. Whatever the reason, meditation can help you feel younger. If you add yoga to your meditation routine, it can make you look younger and be more flexible too.

There are yoga poses that will specifically improve your libido and your sexual satisfaction. By practicing these poses regularly, either alone or with your partner, you can increase the flexibility of your body and increase your body awareness. Ultimately, you will enjoy increased sexual confidence, knowing that your body will respond in new and exciting ways.

Meditation and yoga have both been shown to make us look, feel and act younger, in or out of clothes. A younger appearance and mindset are huge confidence boosters in our youth-obsessed society, and meditation can help.

Meditation Improves Your Libido

Meditation provides a natural boost to your sex drive hormones. DHEA (dehydroepiandrosterone) is a hormone produced by the adrenal glands and the brain. It leads to the production of male and female sex hormones. It starts to decline after age 30, and can be further decreased by common medications such as oral contraceptives and corticosteroids. DHEA can be prescribed for certain conditions but has some undesirable side effects, including hair growth, decreased breast size and irregular periods in women and aggression and reduced testes size in men.

DHEA is naturally increased through meditation, which increases sex drive in both men and women. By normalizing your testosterone levels, which both males and females have, you will notice an increase in sexual desire, improved arousal and increased responsiveness. The natural production of DHEA that comes from meditation has no side effects. It simply increases the amount of DHEA in your body to that which you had when you were younger. Also, meditation increases circulation and blood flow, which can increase arousal and satisfaction.

Mindfulness and meditation have been found to be effective in improving problems with sexual desire and arousal in cancer survivors. Using mindfulness-based cognitive behavioral therapy, women reports significant increases in arousal and desire and less sexual distress. These effects lasted for six months after the treatment. The women were found to be far more in tune with their bodies’ responses to the therapy than they had been before.

Improved libido is only one-way meditation can improve our lives as we age. It can also help with intelligence, pain management and, yes, appearance. Those who meditate actually look younger and studies show that their bodies show fewer signs of aging.

Meditation Improves Your Mood

How often have you told your partner, “I’m just not in the mood?” By incorporating meditation into your life, you may find that you are in the mood more often and that is a big confidence-builder for both you and your partner.

According to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health at the National Institutes of Health, meditation can reduce anxiety and depression, and can help reduce insomnia and improve the quality of sleep. All of these factors can impact your mood and your libido. A 2011 study funded by the NCCIH found that adults who participated in an eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program had better mental health and quality of life.

In 2013 the American College of Chest Physicians published guidelines that suggested that Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction enhanced mood and self-esteem in those with lung cancer. Many other studies have shown that meditation can improve the mood of those who are recovering from cancer and other diseases, as well as those who have PTSD and other disorders.

Even one or two of these advantages can have a marked impact on sexual confidence, leading to a higher sex drive, increased arousal and improved satisfaction. Imagine the impact that all five of them can have on your sexual confidence and, by extension, on your sex life! And they are all possible, just by adding meditation to your life.

Don’t know how to start meditating? It’s not difficult to do and requires no special equipment or facility. There is a wealth of information available on the internet, and that’s a great way to get started. Videos will help to explain the best way to start, and how to move on from there. Meditation can be done every day and nearly anywhere. It’s not addicting (although it may become a habit) and you can’t overdose on it. There are no side effects, except more sexual confidence and a more satisfying life, in and out of the bedroom.

Have you found that meditation has improved your sexual confidence? Tell us about it in the comments below.